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of a piece of it being cut off, should the teeth come forcibly
together with the spasm; the eyes rolled inwards, the eyelids
for the most part are separated, and affected with palpitation;
but should they wish to shut the lids they cannot bring them
together, insomuch that the white of the eyes can be seen
from below. The eyebrows sometimes relaxed towards the
mesal space, as in those who are frowning, and sometimes
retracted to the temples abnormally, so that the skin about the
forehead is greatly stretched, and the wrinkles in the intersuperciliary
space disappear: the cheeks are ruddy and quivering;
the lips sometimes compressed together to a sharp point,
and sometimes separated towards the sides, when they are
stretched over the teeth, like as in persons smiling.
As the illness increases lividity of countenance also supervenes,
distension of the vessels in the neck, inability of speech
as in suffocation; insensibility even if you call loudly. The
utterance a moaning and lamentation; and the respiration a
sense of suffocation, as in a person who is throttled; the pulse
strong, and quick, and small in the beginning,--great, slow,
and feeble in the end, and irregular throughout; tentigo of
the genital organs. Such sufferings do they endure towards
the end of the attack.
But when they come to the termination of the illness, there
are unconscious discharges of the urine, and watery discharges
from the bowels, and in some cases an evacuation also of the
semen, from the constriction and compression of the vessels, or
from the pruriency of the pain, and titillation of the humours;
for in these cases the pains are seated in the nerves. The
mouth watery; phlegm copious, thick, cold, and, if you should
draw it forth, you might drag out a quantity of it in the form
of a thread. But, if with length of time and much pain, the
matters within the chest ferment, but the restrained spirit
(pneuma) agitates all things, and there is a convulsion and disorder
of the same, a flood, as it were, of humours swells up to
